Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Philippa Lowthorpe
Starring: Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Lindsay Duncan, Denise Gough, Sam Spruell
It is the thing with feathers, after all...
Derived from the lauded memoir by Helen Macdonald, Philippa Lowthorpe's (co-writing duties shared with Emma Donoghue) handsome cinematic adaptation arrives just over a decade after H is for Hawk's initial publication. Promising prestige misery set within the chalk hills of Cambridgeshire, and charged with Macdonald's lyrical prose, the book became a publishing phenomenon (it's outdoorsy-triumph-over-personal-adversity narrative is probably partly and unfairly to blame for The Salt Path...). Encouraged by the sudden death of their (Macdonald is non-binary) father (here played by Brendan Gleeson), Macdonald’s memoir is a recount of their attempts to train a Eurasian goshawk during a year of grief, featuring literary meanders into the life of the naturalist and writer T. H. White along with specifically philosophical musings on man's connection with the natural world. Movie H is for Hawk's plotline, however, is pared back to focus on its central character, played by Claire Foy, and offers a cathartic narrative of how the Cambridge lecturer's burgeoning relationship with Mabel the goshawk, fierce and savage birds of prey which are notoriously difficult to train, enables them to come to terms with the vicissitudes of life and death. A sort of Barbour Kes.
I've had the memoir untouched on my shelf for what turns out to be a decade, then. Think I got it in the sale: I can never resist a hardback, especially one with such a starkly beautiful woodcutty cover. I've never read it, though - I must have picked it up back home, scanned the blurb and dropped it like Helen does the heavy-duty swivel used to tether Mabel during the film's several calamitous training sequences. Never been one for the grief-lit (I probably bought it thinking it was a nature book), but flicking through the pages now it's clear that Lowthorpe and Donoghue's adaptation has fealty to the source (although, by nature of the medium, the film cannot recapture the insistent poetry of Macdonald's prose). Their adaptation is forcefully cinematic, with spectacular outside sequences effectively encapsulating the UK countryside in early winter; thin light, bare trees, flat vistas; which in turn contrasts the closely packed sandstone buildings of the university city. In an unflinching static medium shot we see Helen's initial attempt at manning the bird: encouraging it to perch on a secured leather glove. As the bird pulls away again and again, we see Helen (and by extension, Foy) hold her nerve and persevere in camera with no cuts: an authentic presentation of the film's themes of natural instincts and our attempt to control them.
Further legitimacy is offered by the film's portrayal of family life, and the close relationship of the Macdonalds (Gleeson is present via flashbacks throughout), the warmth of which powers the film. As does Foy's central performance, which veers from recklessly enthusiastic to gloomily monomaniacal. Helen's association with Mabel is at once an attempt to deal with grief but also to reconnect with their dead father, a lot for this little bird to weather, and the film duly queries the rationality of Helen's pursuits. Conflict is created by an encroaching deadline where Helen must speak about their father at a memorial, a task which they put off, throwing themselves into further ornithophilia as a distraction. In a literary work, this psychology could be communicated through embroidered psychological description, but as a visual medium the film must introduce expository sequences wherein we see Helen take Mabel to a meet and greet for nonplussed posh nobs at the university (Why? It's like me taking one of the cats to the staff room), and also moments where senior lecturers express professional concern about Helen's avian affiliation (all a bit unconvincing to be honest - Helen simply has a pet and is grieving; they are not, say, an alcoholic - but I understand the necessity of such narrative texture). And, just as I was pondering the validity of privileging the sentience and sanctity of one animal, Mabel, over another, the birds and rabbits Helen trains her to hunt and kill, the film addresses the quandary in a lecture delivered by our main character in which they outline the natural order of these matters, binding the sermon with a moving consolidation of the inescapability of death (the hecklers who challenge Helen on the matter do seem conveniently dim: so much for that Oxbridge education, eh readers?).
The links to grief - with its mercurial difficulties - are refreshingly candid and handled well by Foy (shamefully, Helen neglects her mum, played by - what a cast - Lindsay Duncan: mourning can be selfish and ugly). Perhaps, for some, the approach may be a little too on the nose, but in the case of H is for Hawk, the open parallels of anguish, obsession and inability to accept are refreshing. As hinted at, this sort of fare - with its particular introspective requirements - isn't for me, so mileage may vary. But for the film H is for Hawk sets out to be and succeeds in achieving, I refer to the quote from Julian of Norwich which the narrative denotes as part of its everyday, accessible emotional metric: "all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
H is for Hawk is in cinemas from January 23rd.
